This invention relates to digital data readers and electronic books that emulate the attributes of a printed book, and more particularly, to electronic books that present to the reader the tactile feel, visual appearance, and general physical experience of reading a book that approximate that of a printed book.
Personal, hand-held digital data readers are known. Some have been devised as electronic books to function as substitutes for the printed book. These readers have attributes of a computer appliance. Known readers sometimes have a single display screen, but others may have two screens that substitute for the facing pages of a book. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,761,485 to Munyan discloses a personal electronic book system having a hinged electronic book with two touch-screen displays with touch control areas throughout the surfaces of the screens to control the display of information.
None of the known devices has found acceptance by book readers as a substitute for the printed book for use in common reading conditions, and in particular, none has been accepted as a book to curl up with, as the term is used by book readers.
It therefore would be desirable to have a digital data reader in the form of an electronic book that presents the reader with a reading experience that approximates that of reading a printed book.